By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Patient readers, I had an emergency talk with a friend while I wrote this, and so this post will be a little thin. After 2:00 I have some administrivia to do. I may be able to return after then and add orts and scraps. We’ll see!
And on another note: I shall not be sad to see the last of 2023; it was an absolute pest of a year, chock full of reminders that we do indeed live in the stupidest timeline. Given the givens, my hopes for 2024 are not high, but prediction is hard, especially about the future; the world is complicated and we don’t know a lot, we may get lucky, and in any case we will persist! And so, with that modified rapture, I will see you in the New Year, which I hope is a happy one for all of us. And stay safe out there!
Bird Song of the Day
White Stork, CHKO Poodří–PR Kotvice, Moravskoslezský kraj, Czech Republic. More percussion and winds!
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
The Constitutional Order
“Maine secretary of state bars Donald Trump from state’s presidential primary ballot” [Portland Press Herald]. “‘I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,’ [Shenna Bellows] said. ‘I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.” • Here is Bellows’ bio; she came up through liberal Democrat NGOs, which of course has conservatives bellowing that she’s a communist. Here is the ruling.
“John Dean: ‘Trump’s in trouble’ after Maine ruling” [John Dean, The Hill]. “The Trump campaign pledged to appeal the Maine ruling, and the Supreme Court is expected to take up the Colorado case. Dean said he doesn’t think the Supreme Court would go against either decision, citing a plain reading of the amendment’s text. ‘I want to see those strict constructionists and originalists get around that language,’ he said. “How are they going to do it? I don’t know. It looks so applicable. I don’t know what they can do with it other than take [Trump] off the ballot.'”
“The Mess in Maine” [Matt Taibbi, Racket News]. “I’m no lawyer, but I doubt the 14th Amendment was designed to empower unelected state officials to unilaterally strike major party frontrunners from the presidential ballot. If it was, that’s a shock. I must have missed that in AP Insane Legal Loopholes class. Is there any way this ends well? It feels harder and harder to imagine.”
2024
Less than a year to go!
* * * * * * “FBI shocker: Agent told boss Biden laptop could be Russian disinformation, but team knew otherwise” [Just the News]. “The FBI agent who ran the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) during the 2020 election admitted in Congressional testimony that he advised his leadership that Hunter Biden’s laptop could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign, apparently unaware his team already knew that the FBI had obtained and corroborated the computer as “real,” according to interview transcripts reviewed by Just the News. Retired FBI Special Agent Bradley Benavides’ account to the House Judiciary Committee comes as congressional investigators gather mounting evidence that the government’s early efforts to identify and block alleged misinformation in politics have been so haphazard as to inject inaccurate, speculative, or incomplete information themselves into the public domain.” • “Haphazard” sounds like “mistakes were made” to me.
* * * IA: “Iowa doesn’t matter” [The Hill]. “Ted Cruz won Iowa in 2016. Rick Santorum won in 2012. Perhaps these finishes helped them clear the field, but ultimately each man fell short of the nomination. Huckabee won in 2008 — and John McCain, the eventual nominee, finished fourth. You have to go back to 2000 to find a GOP presidential nominee who won Iowa, with George W. Bush. In fact, you could make the argument that if you want to win the GOP nomination, you’d be better off losing Iowa, given recent results. Of course, that’s likely to change in 2024, and that’s another reason for Iowa’s inconsequentiality this cycle. Donald Trump, playing the role of both scorned incumbent and renegade challenger, has Iowa all but locked up. He’s up 33 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average, a position essentially unchanged over the past five months. A strong DeSantis second-place showing — maybe only losing by 20 — will feel like a pyrrhic victory…. Now, the smart money is on 2024 being a year of unprecedented political chaos. So perhaps Iowa will shock us all, both the prognosticators and junkies in the press and the general electorate. Maybe the polls are historically wrong!”
Democrats en Déshabillé
Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert
I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:
d>. (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.
Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.
#COVID19
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
“Something Awful”
Lambert here: I’m getting the feeling that the “Something Awful” might be a sawtooth pattern — variant after variant — that averages out to a permanently high plateau. Lots of exceptionally nasty sequelae, most likely deriving from immune dysregulation (says this layperson). To which we might add brain damage, including personality changes therefrom.
* * *
Elite Maleficence
I don’t know how Trump came to nominate Jerome Adams, or how Adams ended up as one of the few sane voices around:
Many of the replies/ comments below illustrate why we are stuck as a society.
Some (too many) people: “We can’t move forward until public health and officials admit their mistakes!!!
Same people (after public health/ officials admit their mistakes): SEE!! They admitted it!… https://t.co/h1MzNzHmhJ
— Jerome Adams (@JeromeAdamsMD) December 29, 2023
I am of two minds on this. If we were investigating public health debacles the way we investigate aircraft crashes, we’d remove the penalizing element in favor of getting good information, to prevent the next crash. But that wasn’t the norm going in. It might be a good idea going forward, but personally I think the dock in the Hague Tribunal is the place for all these people. Or, to be nice, testimony at a “Peace and Reconcilation” commission. Not that this will never happen, because nobody from the PMC upward is ever accountable for anything (except the odd DEI dogpiling incident. But milllions of lost lives? Heaven forfend).
At least he said “minimal” instead of mild:
I have tested positive for Covid. My symptoms are minimal and I will continue to work from home in Vermont while isolating in accordance with CDC guidance. I am glad to be fully up to date with the vaccine.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 28, 2023
There’s a lot wrong with this utterly typical statement. First, “minimal symptoms” erases both asymptomatic transmission and the fact that neurological and vascular damage, plus Long Covid, can resuilt from even “mild” cases. Second, Sanders should not be normalizing “powering through” Covid by working; IIRC, excess effort — too lazy to find the link — is one way to end up with Long Covid. Further, Sanders should be modeling sick leave ffs.
“I Had COVID-19 and Tried to Change My Flight. JetBlue Gave Me the Last Answer I Expected” [The Messenger]. “I didn’t want to fly with COVID and pleaded with JetBlue to change my flight and suspend the fee for switching. I explained that I was visiting my partner’s family, one of whom is very sick. Even if JetBlue was fine with my Covid-positive status, I would have nowhere to stay when arriving in California. I asked the JetBlue agent to waive the fare difference so that I could fly to San Francisco on a different day. She said she could not do so. Then the JetBlue agent told me the last thing I expected: I could fly with the virus. She did suggest a precaution — a face covering. Her supervisor had the same answer: I could get on my original flight with Covid, but the airline wouldn’t waive the fare difference for a new flight two days later.” • Whatever “face covering” means. Why not just mask the whole plane?
Case Data
NOT UPDATED From BioBot wastewater data, December 23:
Lambert here: Still going up. As a totally “gut feel” tapewatcher, I would expect this peak to meet or exceed the two previous Biden peaks; after all, we haven’t really begun the next bout of holiday travel, or the next rounds of superspreading events celebrations. Plus students haven’t come from from school, and then returned. So a higher peak seems pretty much “baked in.” And that’s before we get to new variants, like JN.1. The real thing to watch is the slope of the curve. If it starts to go vertical, and if it keeps on doing so, then hold onto your hats.
Regional data:
Regional split continues.
Variants
NOT UPDATED From CDC, December 23:
Lambert here: JN.1 now dominates. That was fast.
From CDC, December 9:
Lambert here: I sure hope the volunteers doing Pangolin, on which this chart depends, don’t all move on the green fields and pastures new (or have their access to facilities cut by administrators of ill intent).
CDC: “As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell.
Covid Emergency Room Visits
NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, December 23:
Lambert: Return to upward movement. Only a week’s lag, so this may be our best current nationwide, current indicator.
NOTE “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is “just like the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week period” is appropriate for bothMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much. Notice also that this chart shows, at least for its time period, that Covid is not seasonal, even though CDC is trying to get us to believe that it is, presumably so they can piggyback on the existing institutional apparatus for injections. And of course, we’re not even getting into the quality of the wastewater sites that we have as a proxy for Covid infection overall.
Hospitalization
Bellwether New York City, data as of December 27:
Lambert here: I don’t still don’t like the slope of that curve, and notice we’re approaching previous peak levels (granted, not 2020 or 2022, but respectable).
NOT UPDATED Here’s a different CDC visualization on hospitalization, nationwide, not by state, but with a date, at least. December 16:
Moving ahead briskly!
Lambert here: “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”. So where the heck is the update, CDC?
Positivity
Lambert here: Notice that for both Walgreens and the Cleveland Clinic, that although the percentage of positives is stable, the absolute numbers have greatly increased; Walgreen’s doubled. This speaks well of people; they’re getting tested before the holidays (and in face of a shit*tstorm barrage of propaganda and peer pressure to minimize, too).
NOT UPDATED From Walgreens, December 26:
-2.3%. Down. (It would be interesting to survey this population generally; these are people who, despite a tsunami of official propaganda and enormous peer pressure, went and got tested anyhow.)
NOT UPDATED From Cleveland Clinic, December 23:
Lambert here: Plateauing. I know this is just Ohio, but we’re starved for data, so….
NOT UPDATED From CDC, traveler’s data, December 4:
Turning down.
Down, albeit in the rear view mirror. And here are the variants for travelers, December 4:
BA.2.86 turns down. This would be a great early warning system, if the warning were in fact early, instead of weeks late, good job, CDC.
Deaths
NOT UPDATED Here is the New York Times, based on CDC data, December 16:
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States Chicago PMI” [Trading Economics]. “The Chicago Business Barometer, also known as the Chicago PMI, fell to 46.9 in December 2023 from 55.8 in November, well below market expectations of 51. The latest reading signaled that Chicago’s economy returned to contraction in December.”
Manufacturing: “Missing piece on aircraft prompts Boeing to ask airlines to inspect all 737 Max jets” [CNN]. “Boeing has asked airlines to inspect all of their 737 Max jets for a potential loose bolt in the rudder system after an airline discovered a potential problem with a key part on two aircraft. An unnamed international airline found a bolt with a missing nut in a rudder-control linkage mechanism while conducting routine maintenance – and it found a similar bolt that wasn’t properly tightened in a yet-to-be delivered plane. An airplane’s rudder is used to control and stabilize the aircraft while in flight. Boeing said the plane with the missing bolt was fixed, but it wants to ensure all 1,370 737 Max planes in service worldwide are checked for similar problems…. The part in question is a critical safety item, for which the FAA requires double inspection. That means two sets of eyes must sign off that it is ready for flight…. The Max has faced numerous notices for additional inspections since it returned to service. Boeing says that’s a result of its increased focus on safety, but a missing nut on a crucial system cannot be explained away, noted CNN safety analyst David Soucie. ‘If the airplane left the factory with this missing part, it indicates the past three years of safety culture improvements and improved inspections on critical safety of flight systems at Boeing isn’t working,’ Soucie said.” • Yep.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 77 Extreme Greed (previous close: 78 Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 63 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 29 at 1:34:46 PM ET.
Zeitgeist Watch
“University chancellor fired after porn videos surface” [The Hill]. “University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UW-La Crosse) Chancellor Joe Gow was allegedly fired for producing and appearing in pornographic videos with his wife after the school discovered the content. Gow told The Hill his free speech rights were being violated after videos with his wife, former UW-La Crosse professor Carmen Wilson, surfaced and the school told him he was no longer allowed to be chancellor. …. Gow said it was ‘quite a surprise’ when they told him he was fired since he had a conversation with HR previously about the videos, saying the meeting ‘went well and satisfied their concerns.’… He argues he should have had a hearing to explain himself before termination, telling the Associated Press that ‘when reasonable people understand what my wife and I are creating, it calms them down.'” • Hmm.
News of the Wired
“Every Major Pharmacy Chain Is Giving The Government Warrantless Access To Medical Records” [TechDirt]. “The private entities involved here probably have more reason than most to not try to piss the government off. Not only are they still struggling to recover from a widespread retail downturn ignited by a worldwide pandemic, but they’re also paying off large settlements to the government for playing things a bit too fast and loose when it came to handing out opioids to Americans. As Beth Mole reports for Ars Technica (and following on the heels of the news pharmacy chain Rite Aid is facing a five-year facial recognition tech ban), every major player in the retail pharmacy business has been handing over sensitive medical data to the government without ever demanding to see an actual warrant.” • That’s nice.
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I have a 72 y.o. friend who has had a series of medical emergencies and who can barely move; it is unclear what her underlying problem is; she also has psychological issues. She is now in a rehab facility in a wealthy town in Silicon Valley; it is a reputable facility. Of course her insurance company is trying to have her discharged, but the facility doctors know that she can’t go home safely (she is a hoarder and has no funds to hire help), so they are trying to delay her discharge. But – when she first came into the facility a few weeks ago, she did not have covid but was put in a room with someone with covid since it was rampant in the place, and she caught it; she seems to have had a “mild case” but it can’t have helped her physical state.
And now she has been put in a room with three other people. Four people in one room during a pandemic. I am reminded of the Victorian TB wards, but at least there weren’t a bunch of TB variants. If you wanted to kill people, this would be a good way.
Someone posted on reddit covid positive that he had had covid twice, and that his long covid came from his mild case, not from his awful case. That would make sense because if you have a mild case your immune system is not mounting much of a defense, right? And the virus can more readily settle in. That is an unpleasant speculation.
>>>And now she has been put in a room with three other people. Four people in one room during a pandemic. I am reminded of the Victorian TB wards, but at least there weren’t a bunch of TB variants. If you wanted to kill people, this would be a good way.
At least in the those Tuberculous sanatoriums, often the main treatment was to provide a pleasant environment with plenty of rest, clean air, good food, and sunlight, which often worked.
This complete list is not something I usually see in modern hospitals. If it was, I believe that the deaths and injuries from Covid would be much lower.
One of the reasons sieges, and winters were in the past, are so deadly is because of the stress and poor food, as well as the unsanitary and cramped conditions, making people more likely to die from disease aside from the easier spreading of disease.
Maybe our society is under siege, which might explain much of the suffering from Covid aside from the lack of quarantines or even medicine? All this stress, hunger, and poor living conditions cannot be helping us all.
> Maybe our society is under siege
An excellent and unexpected connection. Under seige by whom?
The paranoid ruling caste that cannot ever loosen their choke hold on us for fear of what they know will happen if they do?
🛎️🛎️🛎️
The gods LS.
She has a friend who is visiting her every day (I’m not visiting in person until the current covid surge recedes). The call button never brings anyone, so he sent me a photo of her sleeping on the floor (this was yesterday when she was still in a two person room). She couldn’t reach her cell phone or her purse since they had been put out of her reach so she crawled out of bed to get them and then couldn’t get back into bed. So she pulled down some bedding to the floor and slept on the floor for hours; no-one noticed.
It’s not just there. I have another friend who is in a different upscale skilled nursing facility nearby (it is perhaps the nicest in the area); they also don’t answer the call button. He is really low maintenance so he is hardly trying for excess help. He’s given up and now makes his way to the bathroom on his own despite his broken fibula. As a bonus he pays $600 per month for concierge medicine; when he called his doctor’s office for advice about a medication a couple of days ago he found out that his doctor is on vacation; the doctor covering for him was actually angry and hostile at my friend for calling. Money is not going to solve the problem of staffing shortages and mental issues in health care workers, except maybe if you are truly wealthy.
This is awful. Thank you for conveying it though. It’s a perverse sort of encouragement for me. I’m always worried about sounding hysterical when I warn my family about the state of care. But if things are this bad, I don’t mind what they think of me.
At least neither has an active infection (e.g. bedsores or a UTI), and neither is in terrible physical pain, and both can make their needs known (even if no-one on the staff is available to notice). It could be a lot worse, and I think it must be for many people.
I’ve twice seen references to findings that asymptomatic infection predisposes one to reinfection. This was a pet hypothesis of mine, so I remember the count. Another related pet hypothesis is that we might see a trend towards attenuation of symptoms before an avalanche of Long Covid. So far no evidence for that, not that I’ve noticed at any rate.
kareninca I understand your dismay . The non-existent Covid precautions, on top of the issues that bring people into these facilities are rage inducing.
My Sister-In-Law has Lewy Body Dementia, related to Parkinson’s, but with pronounced paranoia, to the point of suspecting care givers of nefarious affairs. For example, She has a classic Doppleganger delusion re: her partner having a double and “they” were running a whorehouse out of the coat closet. “You never know which one of him you are going to get.”
This has revved up over a few years, but with excellent out-pt care from Psychiatrist and neurologist, she did pretty well. But the time eventually came that, even with help at home, it was not enough. Her partner has his own health problems and is burned out.
She has a cadillac long-term care insurance plan,–knew what to get. She’s in the Memory Care Assisted Living wing of arguably the best facility in the area. Finally Hospice was called and visited her there. The thing is she was very fit before this started, a hiker and biker, camper, at 74 lean, tall and energetic.
So we’d find her walking precariously and fast whenever we visited, giving assignments to her “reports”, usually mute residents who were helping in the current “project”. Once a manager, always a manager. Probably fomenting a revolt. She’d lurch off without her walker, or with someone else’s walker, etc. We could see where this was headed. Maybe we’d see one staff person, sometimes we couldn’t find any. They were OK if you could find one. Skinnier and skinnier,– skeletal. But tough, tough lady. Losing her speech but not her energy.
Then suddenly she stopped walking, didn’t get out of bed. The same staff that had known her before just accepted it, said this kind of thing happens, etc. But the Hospice RN started raising Hell and demanding an xray of her leg which presumably she guarded by staying immobile. It took two weeks to get this and revealed a fractured femur. Surgery followed and she returned to a different unit,–the full-fledged (and much more regulated) Nursing Home wing with more staff, attention. Hasn’t been able to resume walking but appears to be more comfortable. The disease course continues. Because she was hospitalized, the facility can now bill Medicare which reimburses more. Ka-Ching!
This facility used to post a sign early in the pandemic saying Covid was in the facility and visiting was not allowed. These days they do not even inform and the staff are unmasked.
It’s “let her rip”.
They have started their own Hospice service, however, so no pesky outside nurses rocking the boat. Double Ka-ching!!
> They have started their own Hospice service
Another profit center, how nice for them
Let me get this straight: A university chancellor and his wife make p0rn videos and put them on the internet and he thinks it’s no big deal? Does Covid cause psychosis? What is going on with the world?
From president of the board of regents of U W, Karen Walsh (according to the article):
“We are alarmed, and disgusted, by his actions, which were wholly and undeniably inconsistent with his role as chancellor,” Walsh said.
Alarmed and disgusted? Gow is on his way to 10 million views…
[Also, please note, although I am originally from Illinois: Wisconsin is fairly nutty on an ordinary day, but in the winter, and with all of that brandy, and chain saws…]
If he wants to make p0rn films that’s his business.
If he thinks parents will think him fit to helm their child’s uni he’s wrongo. “Yes, we’re sending jr and sis to a uni run by a pornographer”. um…No. / ;)
Pornography is in the eye of the beholder. Apparently, the university deciders must have watched his videos (perhaps intently) in order to decide that they are pornographic. Nudity and sex don’t automatically make it pornographic. There must be more.
Right on! Show me the Moneyshots!
I looked up a few more articles. They published a series called ‘healthy sexy cooking’ where they cooked vegan meals with adult performers, interviewed them, and engaged in sex acts. They were published at places like OnlyFans and porn sites, so they argue nobody would have seen them unless they were looking for that kind of content. He also has something of a history of attempting to normalize sex work – he got into hot water once by inviting one of them to speak at an event.
It does highlight some of our weird ideas about sex, whereby even casual hookups in private are perfectly OK but filming or sharing it (even with people who have opted in to that kind of content) makes it disgusting.
Chancellor is a political role and he is obliged to care about people’s opinions, so I expect the dismissal will hold up. He’s been demoted to faculty and I think they will have trouble pushing him out any further – he has tenure and probably a fairly strong argument for tenure protection, since he did nothing illegal.
Is he, under the terms of his contract with the university, allowed to have a second job? This is a serious question.
He was stupid to post stuff, given the prudish nature of many US citizens. Why are so many people narcissistic enough to want to broadcast everything on the internet.
> Porn is also largely a blob/deep state endeavor, just like most drugs
Evidence?
I accept all your points, but I don’t think pornography is going away (it’s a variant of the oldest profession, after all). So the question is how we deal with it as a society. As you point out, our current approach is just about the worst we could have, with a semi-accepted veneer (legal, if not respectable) over an industry that is little better than human trafficking. We celebrate pornographers like Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt, while stigmatizing the performers themselves and ostracizing them from society.
Lots of people were uncertain about legalizing sex work here because they weren’t sure if it would constitute approval. But once I saw how much it improved the lives of people who were previously on the margins of society, I was convinced it had been the right thing to do. I might not approve, and I still wouldn’t want my friends or relatives doing it, but if they did for some reason then you can damn well bet I’d want them to enjoy proper employment rights and protections and a safe working environment.
Nothing about this case strikes me as particularly exploitative, except maybe the experiences of the sex workers, and the interview part was probably aimed at airing their experiences and humanizing them. So I think the ‘disgust’ reactions have less to do with the awful conditions you mentioned and more to do with the overall societal stigma.
> Gow is on his way to 10 million views…
Streisand is starring, then?
To great effect if so…
I would very much like to read the grant application for that project.
lol. Grant application to the National Endowment for the Sciences or to the National Endowment for the Arts? / guffaw. ;)
That would depend on how well “endowed” the performers are?
To steal a quote from the awesome former ESPN announcer and anchor, Stuart Scott.
I’m calling you butter, cause you are on a roll !
That’s actually an old Bob and Ray joke!
All the comedy writers have struck gold going into New Year’s weekend. Unlike the common refrain about “bad publicity” not being a bad thing, it is a bit of a “bad look” and all for an institution of “higher learning and life skills.”
And to add a recent example, being a college football coach at a major institution where there are all manner of allegations by young female students. More than just a bad look.
Guy has less common sense than a fruit fly.
A chancellor with zero understanding of institutional reputation and the chancellor’s role in maintaining that reputation?
Watch the donors flee from the uni if he isn’t fired. / ;)
Since p0rn films by a chancellor could fall under the moral turpitude clause in most boiler plate uni faculty/admin hiring contracts (example below), his ‘free speech’ claim falls against his “fitness” to hold the position,, imo.
example:
IV. GROUNDS FOR DISCIPLINE AND DISMISSAL 1
A faculty member2 may be disciplined, or dismissed, for cause on grounds including but not limited to (1) intellectual dishonesty; (2) acts of discrimination, including harassment, prohibited by law or University policy; (3) acts of moral turpitude substantially related to the fitness of faculty members to engage in teaching, research, service/outreach and/or administration; (4) theft or misuse of University property; (5) incompetence;3 (6) refusal to perform reasonable assigned duties; (7) use of professional authority to exploit others; (8) violation of University policy substantially related to performance of faculty responsibilities; and (9) violation of law(s) substantially related to the fitness of faculty members to engage in teaching, research, service/outreach and/or administration.4
Moral turpitude, per Websters Dictionary.
1
: an act or behavior that gravely violates the sentiment or accepted standard of the community
2
: a quality of dishonesty or other immorality that is determined by a court to be present in the commission of a criminal offense
Hasn’t every POTUS since 1776 been guilty of moral turpitude. Apparently, it is not an impeachable offense, so perhaps it shouldn’t be justification for the firing of the chancellor.
Different jobs, different communities, different hiring processes, different qualifications, different employment contracts.
Personally I don’t have a problem with anyone making or watching porn. If that is what works for you, sure why not.
What’s with all the moral judgment? They are adults, they can do what they want. It’s the stone throwers who need to sit down and have a chill pill.
Adults in control of minor childrens’ education.
You gonna send your daughter to a male doc who does porn movies? ‘Nuf said. If you don’t get my point what can I say. I suppose Epstein’s minor attracted persons were just misunderstood victims of a blue nose society. / heh
As long as a doctor is competent, why care what they do in their personal life?
What does Epstein have to do anything with this?
There are quite a few athletes who would like to have a word about that. Michigan State’s Larry Nasser, as a physician example, was chief among them, practicing invasive procedures on female gymnasts for years. And to add…No one in upper leadership listened when these young athletes continued to complain.
Jerry Sandusky as well. The examples are boundless and it isn’t limited to the most egregious example of Epstein and Maxwell.
Call me strange…I want a doctor who is mostly sober, alert and sure as hell smarter than I am.
as someone who suffered a serious brain injury as a teenager, i have a pet theory that covid causes brain damage similar to that of repeated concussions (my injury was a back to back concussion in sports, a concussion one day and another the next day that took me out before it was well understood how concussions work). it would explain the aggression and crazy behavior across the population compared to 2019 and earlier. with my own injury i ended up with major anger problems and aggression and had a full change of personality (permanent) where i threatened to kill the EMT for wanting to put an IV in me when i was in the ambulance…
i have since mostly mellowed out a bit with age but even so i can be pushed into a blind rage quicker than most people.
one of the symptoms of brain damage is a lack of boundaries and knowing what is and isnt appropriate for a situation, especially sexual stuff. this would fit the bill…
Thank you for this explanation of the effects of serious brain trauma on your thinking and emotional responses. It is important, I think, for all of us to understand now this possibility of brain injury in those we know. How many of our friends and family members seem now unlike their former selves? Love, forbearance, kindness, awareness are so important now. imo.
ading: and I hope you will not disagree; love, forbearance and kindness for apparently brain damaged people should not include leaving them in control of important public institutions. Imo, leaving them in control would be an unkindness to both themselves, the institution, and the institution’s members at all levels, top to bottom. / my 2 cents
> it would explain the aggression and crazy behavior across the population compared to 2019
We have a ton of anecdotes on brain damage in general but I can’t find a good study. Driving? Chess? SATs? Medication? Law-breaking? What’s a good (not noisy) proxy?
[Shenna Bellows] said. ‘I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.
Maybe if Bellows’s knowledge of U.S. history was wider than repeat attendance at Hamilton and at Hillary Clinton’s “What Happened [to ME!]” grifting tours, she’d know a real insurrectionist:
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
I’d never vote for Trump. (My last presidential votes in reverse chrono order are Green, Green, and Green.)
Yet there is the federal problem, as mentioned–can state officials truly remove a candidate for a nation-wide (federal) post?
A couple of observations as to why things have come to this pretty pass:
–Much of the life of the office-bound, the managerial class, consists of office politics. So the eye clawing, back-stabbing, and snarly gossip are now considered great political virtues.
–Having worked in publishing since the days of hot type, I have witnessed plenty of office politics. Fights to the death over employee handbooks. And this whole law-o-ganza has a strong whiff of a fight to the death over an employee handbook.
–I note that the Democrats aren’t fighting for ballot access by Marianne Williamson, the Greens, Cornel West, and scoundrelly KennedyJr legacy admission.
–No one in their right mind should think that after two or so decades of endless war, endless economic panics, endless moral panics, that war hasn’t come home. War brings only deterioration of democracy. Too bad about that. U.S. goodthinkers want to fret about Orbán, when the leading candidates are Trump, Biden, and scoundrelly Kennedy legacy admission?
From an article at the Hill:
“Maine is the only state in which ballot eligibility challenges go through the secretary of state rather than the court system. ”
Bellows’s knows that this makes her position weak. She isn’t popularly elected–she’s elected by the legislature. And being the only state with a peculiar law…
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4381794-maine-senator-angus-king-trump-shouldnt-be-removed-ballot/
And she was the former executive director of the Maine ACLU. I’m not noticing national ACLU mixed up in this stuff, unless I’ve missed an e-mail blast.
Best new term I’ve read latelyt: the Karentocracy.
You know what it means. / ;)
Somebody must have complained to the manager. And it looks like the Rules Based Order has come home so that any one of fifty States can arbitrarily removed candidates for a Federal election from appearing on State Rolls thus tilting the Federal election. If this is allowed to stand, then you may find this happening in different States maybe only one week out from the Federal election in 2028 causing utter chaos.
> Bellows knows that this makes her position weak.
Not when she runs for Governor.
Just where on the red/blue spectrum does Maine fall?
Will Bellows run as “Tough on Crime” and “I attacked the MAGA Prince” at the same time?
Trump will make it his slogan to ‘Remember the Maine!’
There is actually merit in that idea. It would be a “Memorable Meme.”
And would the boys from the Log Cabin Republicans be a modern day “Rough Riders?”
I call them the Log Mansion Republicans in honor of their ” class loyalty first” orientation.
“Maine is the only state in which ballot eligibility challenges go through the secretary of state rather than the court system. ”
I don’t think that is the case. Here in Hawaii there is an Elections Commission appointed by the legislature which in turn appoints a Chief Elections Officer, subject to Senate advise and consent.
For state and congressional elections, there is a nomination process and for that objections on eligibility are made to the circuit court.
For presidential elections there is no primary process; it’s entirely a matter for state political parties (Ds will have mail-in voting ending April 6, Rs will have in person voting on March 12). Those party processes will determine national convention delegates per party rules. For the general election, there is law concerning how parties name electors and alternates. The Chief Elections Officer determines eligibility. For the actual ballot, HRS 11-113 specifies that a state party official names their candidate, and files a sworn affidavit that the candidate “is legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution”. The Chief Elections Officer must make an eligibility finding within 10 business days and provide notification to the candidate in writing.
“If the applicant, or any other party, individual, or group with a candidate on the presidential ballot, objects to the finding of eligibility or disqualification the person may … file a request in writing with the chief election officer for a hearing on the question.” We have a process under HRS Chapter 91 known as “contested case hearing” where administrative decisions are appealed. Its routine for parties to these hearings to appeal decisions to the courts, but that’s after the hearing.
But they hung together to avid hanging separately and they were the winners. You are only an insurrectionist if you lose. That’s the rule.
>Yet there is the federal problem, as mentioned–can state officials truly remove a candidate for a nation-wide (federal) post?
I was under the impression that the political parties in America were essentially (possibly literally!) private corporations and could do whatever they liked wrt. nominating candidates. I was surprised to see that the states had a say at all in the primary process!
Parties are not “corporations” (as commonly understood to mean business entity). Now it is correct that the NRC did file a couple years ago under a new DC entity law as an entity; that provides the typical incorporation powers of owning property, suing and being sued, etc. State parties are entirely independent, except through charter/bylaw rules. There may be state-level entity law involved. NRC is entirely an elected body from the 56 “states”, and in turn elects an Executive Committee which runs the national party. Most national party business is funneled through the requirements of federal campaign finance law administered through the FEC.
Don’t forget Adams, there was a real rabble rouser.
And one other thing the Democrats have actually sued to have the Green Party removed from various state ballots.
🛎️🛎️🛎️
Correct … so much for #HashtagDemocracy
and they wont allow anyone to primary biden!!! i wish we could sue for political malpractice on that one. so much for democracy. #mostimportantelectionever
“‘I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.
Maybe if Bellows’s knowledge of U.S. history was wider than repeat attendance at Hamilton and at Hillary Clinton’s “What Happened [to ME!]” grifting tours, she’d know a real insurrectionist:
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson; James Madison”
Bellows is a midwit partisan tool. Her highest and best employment was in ACLU activism. That she is an attorney with such limited understanding of the Constitution (and history!) is a clear demonstration of her unfitness for her office. I bet she has a selection of pussy hats in her wardrobe.
Heck if predicting the future was easy, every one would do it and be an economist or a Federal Reserve policy maker ! I’d suggest the future will bring change to the US of A, and whether the changes are wanted or not, in the coming year. There is not much there, admittedly!
Here is one prediction. The World Series 2024 version in MLB will not feature the free wheeling Dodgers. All that money guarantees diddly squat over a 162 game season.
Aaron Judge had a major down year after signing his huge contract, so I expect Otani to have a down year as well. $700 million provides a great distraction.
Ohtani better have great tax lawyers on his deferred compensation scheme.
$700 million contract, but only pays $2M per year while living in CA and then the rest over time once he has retired and left the state of CA.
Don’t think the CA tax department won’t make sure to have him pay his CA state taxes on the $700 million, not just the $25 million he is going to take while playing in CA. If CA lets Ohtani get away with this, then every athlete signing for large paydays in high tax states will be doing the exact same thing.
Going to add a plug for an excellent documentary on the life of Nolan Ryan, which might be available again on Netflix. That dude was a bull in every sense of the word, and much more to him than the no hitters and the dust up where he knuckled Ventura.
Remarkable to watch that earlier in 2023, and recognize that after all his record setting achievements, Ryan did not win a Cy Young.
Sadly, no orts and scraps. And I had a lot to say :-(
Something for the weekend, sir?
Frank Edwards (the News Director of WTTV-TV, Indianapolis) describes a “gigantic cigar shaped thing” someone saw in the sky above Alamogordo, New Mexico.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/WiHVlB8R4EMZ/
With bonus Jackie Gleason appearance.
It appears from the tweets I read that in this case it’s mostly GBD devotees baying for vengeance.
Seems to me he’s apologizing for not implementing the GBD recommendations. He’s not apologizing for the half-assed job they did of implementing any actual layers of public health protection. The comments are full of inaccurate GBD dogma. Other countries managed the initial covid stages much better until they threw in the towel as well.
Aha! Good grief, I thought he was just incoherent.
Never mind John Dean, I want to know what Mo Dean thinks. It’s time for her to be heard. Bound to be better than him.
And Phil Weiss was writing about the Lobby and its many powers long before anyone else I read.
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/the-jewish-establishments-blindness-to-palestinian-slaughter-also-hurts-u-s-jews/
1968 says, “Hold my beer!”
And I’m wondering how much 2024 will be a repeat of 1968, or at least rhyme with it.
The Unpopular President (who was VP for a charismatic predecessor): LBJ vs. Biden
The Loser Seeking Redemption (a character with a shady past): Nixon vs. Trump
The Martyr: RFK vs. …uh, oh, what’s the name of that guy Biden is refusing Secret Service protection for??
Convention Chaos: Mayor Daley’s Chicago Police Riot vs. Chicago Palestinian Genocide Protests?
We know that evil rich dudes like Trump and Biden will never die a natural death before they’re at least 90, due to having the best healthcare taxpayers can be hit up for, so if one of them is forced out of the race it will have to be by some other means. Trump isn’t going to lose a primary or come too close to losing, like LBJ did in NH, but could that happen to Genocide Joe? Is there still time for a 2024 version of Eugene McCarthy to get on the ballot anywhere outside of South Carolina? Or maybe it will take a scripted major health crisis to knock one of the terrible twosome out of the race.
And who could swoop in to grab the nomination as the establishment’s candidate? Not a Hubert Humphrey in this day and age, will have to be somebody that looks like movie star…or is a movie star, maybe? Plus there’s the promise of another traumatic or Black Swan event like MLK’s assassination (which came before Bobby’s)…maybe a false flag bio warfare attack in the US, or a new pandemic? The PTB must have some brainiacs working on scenarios for this.
Now all we need is the 2024 Norman Mailer substitute to write it up (or produce a YouTube history of it).
That’s what the Primary prevention engineers are afraid of. Hence their determined effort to prevent the primaries.
The Democratic Convention has plenary powers. We don’t need no steenkin’ primary.
Per the DNC Charter Article 2:
“The National Convention shall be the highest authority of the Democratic Party, subject to the provisions of this Charter. The National Convention shall recognize the state and other Parties entitled to participate in the conduct of the national affairs of the Democratic Party, including its conventions, conferences and committees. State Party rules or state laws relating to the election of delegates to the National Convention shall be observed unless in conflict with this Charter and other provisions adopted pursuant to authority of the Charter, including the resolutions or other actions of the National Convention. “
I have seen the photos of people bringing their infants to Unmasked Santa. Recently I read a post by a guy who said that he and his wife were afraid to not do the “normal things” with their infant. I pointed out to him that until childhood vaccines came in, it was not normal to bring your infant out in the world everywhere. People understood that infants were fragile, and so their infant’s social set mostly consisted of the household and nearby neighbors, and a lot died of infectious diseases even so. It is only since childhood vaccines that it has become common to put infants in daycare, and bring them to shopping malls and onto planes and to giant Christmas parties and weddings and to Disney World and on 3,000 mile visits to grandparents. A grandma in the 1920s would have been horrified.
Well, we are back to the pre-vaccine days but people haven’t figured that out yet.
I hadn’t thought of this. I’m going to pass it along to my son and daughter-in-law, who’ve had to work very hard to keep their little one safe.
That’s twice you’ve boosted my mood this afternoon!
> It is only since childhood vaccines that it has become common to put infants in daycare
Right, so childhood vaccines are destroying good Christian homes….
Hmmm…. Here’s one time I disagree with you.
My theory is that “nuclear” families are an adaptation to the collapse of villages. The horizon of possible exposures to infectious diseases expanded past some threshold state where a small group could originally deal with a set of common infections and cooperate in the suppression of said infections. (The original version of ‘herd immunity.’ What many miss is that a “herd” is not a ‘population.’ One is a sub-set of the other.)
In ‘modern’ times, childhood vaccines have replaced “herd immunity.” The main difference being that the older ‘herd immunity’ was based upon a process that ‘sacrificed’ a larger portion of the population.
To paraphrase your pithy observation; “Childhood vaccines are destroying ‘good’ (insert moral/social system of personal preference here,) villages.”
Coronavirus-19 has rung the death knell for the last two centuries of social medicine. A deadly disease that does particularly well in attacking the most vulnerable among the population, and that is evolving to evade all vaccines. Just what the Jackpot ordered.
Can Late Stage Capitalism survive alongside a decentralized social living system?
Time will tell.
Stay safe up there in the land of ice and snow.
‘Bernie Sanders
@SenSanders
Dec 28
I have tested positive for Covid. My symptoms are minimal and I will continue to work from home in Vermont while isolating in accordance with CDC guidance. I am glad to be fully up to date with the vaccine.’
If you read the replies, they are not letting him get away with this admission with one saying ‘What good is a vaccine if that vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting the disease that you’re supposedly vaccinated from (8 times now)?’ Here is a nitter link of that tweet so that you can read those replies-
https://nitter.net/SenSanders/status/1740394578266792371
Whoboy … this is seriously WTF zone …
‘War crime on a massive scale’: 18 dead in Russia’s huge escalation of Ukraine conflict
Russia has launched a “massive” new attack on Ukraine in an escalation of the already horrific war on a huge scale.
https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/war-crime-on-a-massive-scale-18-dead-in-russias-huge-escalation-of-ukraine-conflict/news-story/8d6d481b9a3b47bdae7cb280c20bb24d
Author Author Author – !!!!!! – Chloe Whelan
Journalist
Chloe Whelan is a journalist in the Sydney bureau, writing from Gadigal land. She worked as an independent reporter for The Australian and news.com.au before permanently joining the News Corp team. Chloe has a degree in politics and international relations from the University of Sydney.
https://www.news.com.au/the-team/chloe-whelan
Hay I’m trying to get fit here, taking a break from building new home 6 in 1 Gym and bang right between the eyes … stuff like this can lead to day drinking and there goes the getting fit thingy …
That “narrative” was what Victory Gin was distilled for.
“We have always been at war with East Misinformation.”
Get with the programming?
Flooded out yet? (Stay dry.)
.
https://x.com/stanzupforit/status/1740806757423952289?s=46
am i the only one getting civil war 2 vibes from the effort to remove trump from the ballot? dont get me wrong, i hate trump, but i cant see how this is going to go peacefully….
Nope, you’re not alone.
I don’t see it. The reason I don’t is simple – to my reckoning, civil war only happens when one side feels like they have no recourse other than violent uprising. As pathetic as lawfare attempts to keep Trump off the ballot are, the GOP has already telegraphed that they are willing to respond in kind by getting Biden off the ballot in GOP controlled states. It’s going to be the mother of all tit-for-tats. Additionally, not all Dem-controlled states are going to pull a “Colorado” or “Maine”. One Supreme Court swat of the nonsense should also put paid to future (futile) attempts.
Then again … #Popcorn
Someone should do a running study . . . of the states that try to get Trump off their ballots, how many are Republican controlled? How much if any of this is internal struggle within the Republican Party over ” Who governs the Republican Party”?
> How much if any of this is internal struggle within the Republican Party over ” Who governs the Republican Party”?
Given that the paper that ignited all this was penned by two members of the Federalist Society, I’d have to say that the internal struggle was significant, but at the elite level only (the level the Never Trumpers operate, so far as I can tell). I might be missing the signal, but I don’t hear anything from the Republican base in favor of keeping him off the ballot). Just another indication that elites are more comfortable with each other than with the dull normals and the proles, as if we didn’t know.
The sense I get is that the elites are splintering on this. As in the ivory tower elites who are not dependent on the public in some manner are the ones running this scam. Those that need public approval in some manner have had to temper their enthusiasm, which is why politicians are backing away. I would say that it was being fueled by the obvious ability for this to become tit for tat except the first group of unlikely Trump supporters have clear presidential aspirations, Newsom being the most striking coming from a Democratic state.
I wonder if provoking a more serious event than Jan. 6 is a goal of all this lawfare.
call it what it is, free trade,
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/29/globalization-is-crumbling-time-for-domestic-self-sufficiency-in-2024/
Wasn’t the same thing threatened last time? There was a faction of Dems who said no way would Trump be allowed to be re-elected. Some might argue that much of the rioting the summer before was also about Trump since it stopped as soon as he lost.
And as we now know the rigged election of Biden (if only by suppressing the Hunter laptop story) has produced its own form of disaster. So arguably the civil war started in 2016 and has been simmering along ever since. If Trump does win next year that too will likely have been artificially created by the hoops being jumped through to foist Biden on the public a second time.
I’d be more worried about what happens overseas than our already existing chaos. Clearly the great American public has forgotten where it put its pitchforks. And while the Dems may complain about the result should Trump win they are not the armed faction in any case. True there’s the lone gun nut to worry about and Carlson did ask Trump is he was afraid of being shot. But an uprising I think not.
“Missing piece on aircraft prompts Boeing to ask airlines to inspect all 737 Max jets”
The guy responsible for that job really had only one job but he blew it. Thing is, these days you have to ask yourself whether a sickened workforce was a major factor in this happening. That as workers fall sick, other workers from other parts of the line have to be brought in to do the work who are not familiar with the job.
> Boeing
The thing that really worried me is that the missing bolt debacle took place in Everett and Renton (union) not South Carolina (non-union). Renton is supposed to be the last bastion of competence…
Here is a meme which is almost adjacent to being a koan.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/18tl8wf/think_about_it/
Jon Favreau* is not a nice person at all. Shot:
Chaser:
Favreau tries to mop up the whiskey and get it back in the glass:
Favreau’s follow up would be more persuasive if Long Covid, or Covid generally, were a topic regularly covered on his highly influential podcast.
But what really fascinates me is Favreau’s use of the word “brand.” Does he really think of people as brands? Do the PMC generally?
NOTE * Obama’s former speechwriter, now a podcaster.
Looking at the response to his CYA post says this was the second least effective “clarification” of a statement this week. And it really has given Haley a run for her money.
Response is split between pointing out that Sanders is not some random person but deeply involved in healthcare policy and thus should know that is a terrible reaction, and those making your point about his lack of interest in long Covid in his social media. Nobody thinks this has made things better.
Favreau is a frigging producer, of course he thinks of people as a brand, and information is a product. He is as much of a salesman as Trump is, the difference is that he is and always has been selling to a self selected group. His original writing is niche. His more popular productions had an audience established by others before him or were written by people with more connection to wider swaths of the population. He was perfect for Obama because he is as faux hip and cool as Barry is.
And he has always been a
d***“not a nice person”.Of course it is all about branding, hence the DNC’s conviction that they just need a better PR campaign to convince the groundlings to fall in line behind Bidenomics. Why, an updated logo on the bag featuring “new and improved” and they’ll eat that kibble right up!
Sanders has been marinating in the DC culture for decades now. Perhaps despite his best efforts he will have absorbed some of the DC ethos. He may have what could be called a ” contact dumm”.